Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France, by Robin Mitchell

Gloria Wekker

doi:10.1163/22134360-09503050

Abstract

Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France, by Robin Mitchell

Highlights

In this attractively written, handsomely illustrated volume, historian Robin Mitchell discusses the lives and representations of three Black women in nineteenth-century France in the context of the devastating loss of France’s most profitable colony at the time: Saint-Domingue
While everyone knows about South African Sara Baartman, a.k.a
While the focus is on France and the ways it dealt with race, gender, and heteronormativity by sexually obsessing over the few Black women present there, Mitchell deftly places developments in the metropole in the context of those in its colonies

Summary

Introduction

Handsomely illustrated volume, historian Robin Mitchell discusses the lives and representations of three Black women in nineteenth-century France in the context of the devastating loss of France’s most profitable colony at the time: Saint-Domingue. It is telling of the large-scale depression that that loss sank France into, that the French held on to this name for a very long time, instead of adopting “Haiti,” the name embraced by the insurgents who staged the first successful Black anticolonial revolution.

Results

Conclusion